Legal Tender

I got up this morning to capture another one of those unexpected ideas that was presented to me before I lost it. It is insights regarding the nature of debt, sin and salvation that have puzzled me for most of my life and keeps me looking for more answers that make sense and line up with the principles I have been learning from the Bible. This increased understanding is helping me to further sort out some of the troublesome questions that have haunted me for years. As I have spent time listening to others who have excellent insights into this subject and put that together with what God has been showing me over the years, the puzzle just keeps getting more filled in and the picture becomes clearer. If you would care to read it, I posted it at another of my blogs where the subject matter fits in with the theme of the site quite well. You can read it by clicking here. But be aware, it is not a real short post. Enjoy and have a great day. And I welcome any comments or ideas to enhance my own understanding even further.

Without an Intercessor - 4

The only reason we will ever be without an intercessor is because there is no longer any need for intercession. That point in time will occur when every person has made a final decision about the relationship offered them by God and when that relationship has been sealed or rejected. If they choose to reject God's offer to transform their heart in covenant bonds with Him, they are sealed in the service of Satan. Then there is no longer any need or use for an intercessor, for there is no one to intercede with any longer, no one left to enter into a relationship different than the one they have chosen.

Yes, truth is lacking; And he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey. Now the LORD saw, And it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, And was astonished that there was no one to intercede; Then His own arm brought salvation to Him, And His righteousness upheld Him. He put on righteousness like a breastplate, And a helmet of salvation on His head; And He put on garments of vengeance for clothing And wrapped Himself with zeal as a mantle. (Isaiah 59:15-17)

As long as there are individuals who have not finalized their choice of which master to render their loyalty and service to, Jesus will continue to intercede with them, seeking to draw them in by any means possible to the side of truth and loyalty to the God of heaven. But there does come a time when people have so hardened their hearts that it is no longer possible whatsoever for them to change their minds. At this point they have destroyed their capacity and ability to choose differently by repeated rejections of the voice of the Holy Spirit. At this time God respects that choice by letting them have the consequences of their own persistent demands. He gives them over – which is the Bible's definition of the wrath of God. (Romans 2:24, 26, 28)

As for you, do not pray for this people, and do not lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with Me; for I do not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me. (Jeremiah 7:16-18)

When an intercessor pleads for God to show mercy to those who have completely rejected His mercy, that is an attempt to get God to reverse His decision to respect their final choice in regards to His offers of mercy and grace. There is no point in God continuing to offer mercy and forgiveness to those who have destroyed all their ability to accept it. The only thing left is to release them to their choices.

Some are confused when they read that everyone will bow in willing worship before God. They assume that because everyone will worship that must mean they will be saved as well. But the two are not the same thing.

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

At the same time, many take this to believe that because every knee will bow that God will resort to the use of force in the end to get unrepentant sinners to worship Him. But that is equally false because it pictures God as one willing to stoop to the methods of His arch-enemy to accomplish securing worship for Himself. This idea is reflective of the spirit of Satan, not that of our wise, loving heavenly Father. This is something that many of us think is only logical because we cannot perceive of any other way that this could be accomplished. But our own ignorance should not be the basis for our beliefs about God's character.

God values freedom more than anything else. This is because true love can only thrive in an atmosphere free of all coercion. So it simply would be illogical and counter-productive for God to resort to removing people's freedom in order to secure worship for Himself. That is a demonstration of selfishness, not the Spirit of selfless love and compassion that marks the acts of God. It is crucial that we clear away the clouds of deception and lies that still fog our vision so that we can see the real truth about the way God relates to sinners. When that begins to take place it will become much easier for us to perceive the real truth and the motivation that will finally cause everyone, both saved and lost alike, to bow before God in willing worship and acquiescence without any coercion whatsoever.

But while all will be in full agreement that God is absolutely fair in every respect and that He is just in the way He has chosen to resolve the problems that sin brought into the universe, it does not follow that all will then be ready to surrender to His authority or be able to thrive in His presence. In fact, ironically it is their very act of willing worship and recognition of His total lack of coercion that plunges the lost into the emotional agonies described as the fires of hell. For to stand in the presence of anyone who loves you so purely and passionately and has endured your rejection of their advances without the slightest trace of evil or resentment or hostility is to self-induce an emotional torment that is on a scale equal with or more intense than the worst possible torture anyone could inflict on you from the outside. This is the true condition that creates the torments of hell.

He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. (Revelation 3:5)

Jesus is currently our intercessor and friend. But that is not for the purpose of changing God's heart about us but to change our hearts about God. When we overcome the lies about God in our hearts and minds through the intercession of Jesus on His behalf, then Jesus, God and ourselves will be in perfect agreement. And the true meaning of the word confess simply means to agree.

And that is the final goal of everything the Godhead and all of heaven has been trying to achieve all throughout this long trial and controversy with Satan's rebellion. God wants to restore fully the atmosphere of full agreement without resorting to any of Satan's false techniques of force, deception or fear. God will finally win this war and He is going to be vindicated using only the truth and the methods consistent with both truth and unfailing love. It is love that is going to overcome in the end, not fear, not force, not deception.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 12-13)

Wrestling With God

I am starting to understand better what was really going on in Jacob's wrestling match with the angel of God. As I ponder the crucial point of transition from spending all of his efforts wrestling against the angel to clinging to the angel, it becomes clear as I relate it to my own experience what needs to take place in my perceptions of how to relate to God.

Jacob had spent his whole life in conflict. Even though he had deep urges to be connected with God, he had been operating under many of the same false assumptions about how to be connected with God as most of us have. He thought that he had to work hard at figuring out how to get what was needed for spiritual success and so when things looked dangerously impossible he always resorted to coming up with whatever it took to move forward. But this meant that he often resorted to using methods and paradigms supplied from the counterfeit system of beliefs about God and the results of those choices always ended up making things worse for his life.

I have been learning that living a righteous life can never be accomplished by figuring out all the right things to do, all the wrong things to avoid doing and then asking God for extra strength, wisdom and ability so I can then perform all those requirements. That is the way that seems right to men, but the end of that way is always death. This is because it is all based on the wrong foundation of fear for motivation instead of reactive love and devotion to a God who is so kind and generous and full of blessing that I just can't help but want to serve Him.

Basing our lives on fear is always a bad idea. And as I look carefully at this wrestling event in Jacob's experience that has been held up as the most important turning point in his whole life, I see that it was at this point that God was able to get Jacob to move past his fear-based relationship with Him to a love-bonded relationship with Him. Instead of fighting against God as he had been inadvertently doing for much of his life, Jacob suddenly switched over to living from his heart fully and threw himself totally on the mercy of God in complete dependence on God's desire to love him, to save him and to do whatever He wanted in Jacob's life.

But from Jacob's side, this did not mean that Jacob relaxed in his wrestling. No, not at all. In fact, if anything he struggled and wrestled even more intensely. But from this point on instead of fighting against the love that God had wanted to bless him with all of his life, he now used all of his remaining energy, both physically and emotionally to cling for dear life to the only One worth clinging to. Instead of clinging to his own efforts to get himself good enough for God or to maneuver himself into a place of favor with God, he now chose to intensely trust in God's heart to accomplish this goal and to stop trying to make things work out through his own efforts and ideas.

Jacob's heart had longed for nearly all of his life for the deep satisfaction that only a real blessing could bring. I can identify very strongly with that feeling. Everyone of us is designed to crave most deeply for a blessing that will impart a sense of worth and value, that will bestow on our deepest soul a strong sense of identity and purpose and most of all to satisfy our deepest need for “joy” which is the keen awareness that someone loves us intensely and is always very glad to be close to us. This is what Jacob had been seeking to satisfy for all of his life but in all the wrong ways.

He had tried to satisfy these deep and legitimate cravings by being a good boy growing up. He had tried to get this most needed blessing by stealing it twice from his brother but with very tragic results. He had resorted to deception and manipulation in many circumstances but to little avail. He had tried to find it in love with a woman but even that backfired terribly as he became the victim of his father-in-law's deceptions and jealousy and ended up with four women. It seemed that no matter how he tried to satisfy these deepest cravings of his heart that everything he did only left him feeling a little more hungry than before. By the time he found himself facing the negative consequences of nearly all of his vain attempts to make himself feel valuable all coming together at once, he still felt completely empty and fearful and helpless. He was a rich man according to the measurements of this world, a man who had multiple lovers, many children and everything that is supposed to make one happy. But instead of feeling fulfilled he felt hopeless, depressed and so full of terror that he was at the end of his rope for figuring out any more ideas of how to satisfy the deepest longings of his soul.

At this point in his life his most intense desires to feel loved and valued far surpassed the terror and dangers that tried to rivet his attention as strong as those were. He realized that his whole family's existence was in jeopardy because of his bungled attempts to get right with God in his past and so he found himself in an all night prayer vigil seeking to connect with the God that had seemed to evade his desperate search for most of his life. Yes, God had appeared to him before to encourage him, but that had not brought him into the deep, satisfying relationship with God that he so wanted to know. He still had not learned how to live in a peaceful state of joy and rest in the arms of his God. He had continued to try to work things out himself and now it seemed that his number was up with his brother coming to attack him.

So in this state of mind, when God himself approached Jacob to give him the very blessing that he so longed to receive, Jacob's life of living first from fear caused him to fight against the very thing that he wanted the most – a hug from his Creator and Redeemer and God. The very time he could have spent soaking in the arms of His Savior he spent trying to fight off and to resist Him instead. How sad that he wasted nearly the whole night resisting the very love and assurance and joy that he was looking for so intently. Because of the lies about God that had distorted his thinking all of his life, he almost totally missed the very opportunity that he had been craving for all of his life.

But fortunately he did not completely miss it altogether. Before it was all done, through the final moments of overwhelming pain searing in his body he came to be aware of the real identity of the one whom he was resisting and his heart leapt into action and he latched on to the only hope worth clinging to. His heart had yearned for a sense of blessing from a Father for all of his life and his hunger for this was so intense that even the excruciating pain of a dislocated hip could not stop him from changing from all-out resistance to all-out clinging dependence. The intense pain only exemplified the even deeper pain that he felt in his heart, longing for the sense of blessing, worth and love that he needed to know to be a real man.

At this point Jacob broke away from his habits of living by fear and plunged into living a life of clinging to love. God had come to him and amplified his fears to the breaking point so that Jacob could see that this method could never supply the deepest needs of his heart. Fear always seems so logical and sensible and natural, but it will always lead us down the wrong path in our pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. Our hearts were not designed for fear but for love and it is not until we reject the suggestions of fear and cling to the unfamiliar but only true source of life in trusting God's heart that any of us will ever be able to receive the blessing that we must have in order to experience fulfillment and peace.

I know that I need to have this experience in my own life. I sometimes sense the intensity of my own heart's cravings for that blessing which I never received from my earthly father. As a result I have lived in a lot of dysfunction in my relationships with others and have had very confused ideas of how to live in relationship with God. God has taught me a great deal of truth about these things over the past few years for which I am eternally grateful. But I also realize that I still don't have that deep sense of value and assurance that was kept from me by the very ones who were supposed to impart it to me when I was young. As a result I can really identify with Jacob and his many attempts to find love in all the wrong ways.

In my study of the Scriptures I realize that God's people are destined to go through a time in the near future called “the time of Jacob's trouble”. But what began to dawn on me a few years ago was that instead of being a time to be terrorized about – as the way this was usually taught, this is going to be the time when we more fully receive that deep sense of blessing and connection with our God that we have been longing for all of our lives.

That is not to say that it will not be terribly painful. That is clear from Jacob's experience. But the fear of pain must be surpassed by our craving and desires for the heart blessing of our Father that forces past every obstacle that tries to keep us from that blessing. I can see that possibly the greatest obstacle that will become evident may be my own mind wrestling against the very channels through which God is seeking to impart His blessing to me. And this is something I need to start learning now, not just in that day when I are forced into this situation.

The reason that these stories are given to us in the Bible is so that we can relate differently to God now based on seeing the mistakes of others in the past. I don't have to try all the wrong ways of connecting with God like Jacob did because I can see from his experience what not to do before I try it myself. The same is true of all the other Bible characters who tried all the wrong ways of figuring out life. We have the advantage of the whole history of the world behind us so that we can learn and take better choices and have better outcomes based on their mistakes and successes.

False Witness Righteousness

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Exodus 20:16)

Something interesting came to my attention yesterday. I was pondering the problem of how often Christians try to act “good”, put so much emphasis on appearing righteous – whatever they happen to think that means – and focus so much attention on behavior instead of the real beliefs of their hearts. As a result we tend to create a great deal of hypocrisy whether we like it or not. Even Jesus rebuked the evangelism of the Pharisees and told them plainly that the converts they worked so hard to produce only became worse hypocrites than they were.

But this is certainly not just a problem of ancient times or even just some other church. It is a problem of human nature and if we are human we are going to gravitate in this direction. Humans have a sinful nature that has skewed our perception of what is important and has rearranged our priorities incorrectly. As a result we assume that sin has to do with behavior more than anything else and so the way to get away from it is to change our external behavior and intellectual beliefs. Or we may go another direction and think that if we just induce enough intense emotions during some form of worship experience that it will make up for all our failures and that God will save us in spite of our selfishness.

But both sides miss the real point of the problem of sin. Sin at its root has little to do with behavior or even appearances. In fact, such thinking is already deep into the deception that sin causes in our thinking. The original problem that caused Lucifer to evolve into Satan was a shift in focus from internal integrity and beauty to external appearances and beauty. He started a revolution based on the idea that external performance was more important than joyful loyalty to the heart of God. And everywhere that sin has infected minds and hearts this same symptom is always sure to appear.

As I have become more familiar with the bigger picture, the context in which we all live and struggle in this life, the clearer it becomes that the core issue in life is not stopping the bad behaviors we do and eliminating “sin” from our lives externally. It is coming to perceive the real truth about God beyond all the mass of lies and misrepresentations of Satan and learning to live in the light of that truth from our hearts. Our lives are not about putting on a good performance as many suppose but about becoming authentic and useful witnesses in the great trial of God being conducted in the universe.

Consider the following verses in relation to the one above.

Isa 43:10 “You are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “And My servant whom I have chosen, So that you may know and believe Me And understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, And there will be none after Me.”

Isa 43:12 “It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed, And there was no strange god among you; So you are My witnesses,” declares the LORD, “And I am God.”

Isa 44:8 “Do not tremble and do not be afraid; Have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none.”

It occurred to me that when we encourage people to act like we suppose Christians might act without first having the core heart condition and connection with God in place with a correct view of the heart of God, then we are really training them to become false witnesses. For to claim to be a Christian whether with words or with actions while failing to understand the real reasons that should be motivating such behavior and words is to live a lie while pretending to live in the truth.

When we think that just learning a set of doctrines is all we need to be a Christian, we are deceiving our own minds as well as trying to deceive others. Of course, the nature of deception is that we soon don't realize we are even deceived and become very defensive if anyone happens to point it out. We tend to assume that Christianity is all about performance and intellectual profession. But sadly the truth is that this is actually setting us up to bear false testimony in the trial of God. For God is interested primarily in a heart connection with His children, not a good outward show. He is not waiting for us to get our act together and look good before men or to even impress Him, He is doing everything possible to get us to surrender our efforts at trying to “do good” and to learn to enter into His rest and joy where He can live in us and produce the righteousness that is impossible for us to ever achieve in our efforts.

But when we resist all efforts by the Holy Spirit to reveal the real truth about God to our hearts, when we choose to live in fear and keep our religion only in the external realm of our life, then the only conclusion that can be made about our life will be that we are bearing false witness against God. For God has stated very clearly in His Word that He is the only one who can cause us to walk in His ways if we will allow Him full access to our hearts and affections. Any other method will result in a denial of His claims.

Abraham is represented in the Bible as one of the examples of how to properly live in a saving relationship with God. Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6 NIV) Paul and James both quote this text in their seemingly opposite explanations of how to live effectively as a Christian. But for those willing to carefully examine both sides of this issue it can be seen that James' emphasis on works does not undo the emphasis of Paul on faith but simply addresses the popular notion that one can have saving faith without having it then change the whole life.

The main point that I think is very easy to miss is that without a heart-based motivation for our works, a real emotional and honest attachment in a real relationship with our Creator and Redeemer, it is impossible for us to live an authentic life of true righteousness. The real problem that we are facing is not a lack of righteousness in our lives as bad as that may be; the real problem is a lack of true belief in the righteousness of God. And I think that is largely due to a great lack of understanding of what that word even means to begin with.

Over the past few years I have begun to perceive that pretty much every word and phrase in religion has had its true meaning transposed into something different than its original. As a result, we can use Bible verses to justify all sorts of false ideas about God and about how to get to heaven, etc. But as I have come to realize the real root meanings of many of these words and phrases such as righteousness – which was a real challenge – I have come to see God in a radically different light than ever before. And the more I see the real truth about God and His attitude and feelings towards me the easier it is to want a deeper connection with Him and the easier it is to surrender my will to His will and allow Him access to the deeper parts of my soul.

I, like everyone else on this planet, have been victimized by false witnesses about God. There is an incredibly huge conspiracy to keep us in the dark about how God feels about us and it has largely been successful. But God is gaining ground on unmasking this conspiracy of lies about Him and He invites all who come into a fuller knowledge of the real truth about Him to become truthful witnesses to what they are encountering in their new relationship with Him.

I do not want to be party to training either myself or others to be false witnesses for God. I do not want to encourage pretending to be Christian while not having a heart filled with the passionate love of the Father. I do not want to motivate people to obedience by frightening them with fears of condemnation or false ideas about God's wrath. I want to increase the light level about God at the heart level and allow this revelation of God's glory to do the work that it does best – produce the righteousness of God in human lives naturally.

When our righteousness is spontaneous, when it is authentic and truthful, when our obedience comes from the heart instead of being forced by the head or motivated by fear, then our testimony in God's trial will become effective to influence others to want to know Him better and respond to His love for them. As we do this we will come into line with the command about bearing false testimony and will find our lives truly authentic and alive. And we will begin to truly know and encounter the glory that Moses begged to see. We shall begin to see the true face of our loving Father.

Without an Intercessor - 3

I just woke up from a very strange, and at the last a very emotionally intense dream. Upon awakening I pondered the significance of this dream and began to realize that very possibly God was drawing my attention to keeping focused on His perspective about a very dicey situation in which I have been sharing counsel and prayer with a friend of mine.

The dream involved this friend, but the situation and the other people involved were altered enough from the real-life version that it did not look very familiar to me. The offended parties in my dream were different than in real life so it caught me by surprise. I think it was intended that way.

Without divulging details that should probably remain private at this point in time about the real situation, I now see that the dream was not so much a parallel to the real-life situation as it was a reminder to allow God full access to the situation even though to all human appearances it seems totally impossible to bring about reconciliation at this point. For at the end of my very strange dream, I suddenly watched God reach into the heart of a very hardened person and draw out of them a confession of His ability to turn their heart back toward their wife that they had rejected for so long.

In my dream I was standing in the next room listening to this amazing confession and see resolution to a problem that I had been trying to work out in a much less satisfactory way that was full of compromise and potential future problems. It suddenly struck me that God's ways of resolving problems was so far superior to anything I can ever come up with that I needed to trust Him implicitly instead of trying to arrange things myself on His behalf. As the amazement overwhelmed me in my dream I began to feel an intense emotion welling up inside of me. As my wife slowly walked into the room where I was standing I just wanted to cry though I found it very difficult to do so for some reason.

But the emotion was so intense in my dream that, as is usually the case in a dream of intense emotions, I woke up and then began to try to figure out what in the world it must mean. The circumstances were so bizarre in my dream that it would make no sense at all in real life which made it very difficult to figure out at first. But then I began to sense as I prayed about it that it was not the details in the dream that were the answer but the understanding that God's solutions would be far better to trust than anything I might come up with for the nearly impossible circumstances that my friend finds himself in at this very moment. If I am to be a true intercessor, an effective friend of the Bridegroom, then I must trust His heart to bring about His desires and to listen very carefully to His Spirit as to how to cooperate with His plans instead of trying coming up with any of my own.

It is very true that God is seeking people to act in the role of friends of the Bridegroom. As I have understood the true purpose of that position over the past few years it has become very clear that this is a very exciting position to fill. Now I am beginning to see how this role is very closely blended with the idea of intercession and the true purpose and function and motives of an intercessor.

In the past two posts I have been examining some background and peripheral issues surrounding intercession as well as touching on the subject of an Investigative Judgment that many believe is happening right now. I have usually thought of this from the perspective of fear which is almost always how it has been couched by those promoting it. But the more I am shedding my context of fear in coming to know the truth about God, the more things like this begin to take on a whole different perspective and understanding. When fear is taken out of the picture then it becomes so much easier to begin to see things differently under the light of real truth. Many things can be brought to view and exciting insights begin to explode everywhere when reality is perceived in the light of a God of pure, unconditional love.

Because I have been spending a lot of time the past few weeks filling my mind with real truth about God by taking every opportunity I have to listen to speakers who have a clear perspective of the gospel much better than mine, I have been feeling a transformation taking place more quickly at my own heart level. I am sometimes amazed at how backward my own heart still is in its opinions about God compared to all the wonderful information my intellect has been exposed to over the past few years. But I also notice that the more I saturate the atmosphere of my soul with the real truth about God the easier it is for the lies about God to begin to float to the surface and be exposed for what they really are. This process is crucial for me if I am to become an effective channel of grace to attract others to want to know God more intimately.

What I am beginning to realize is that I am in training to become an intercessor for God just as Jesus is. A number of years ago it started to become evident to me that the ministry of intercession on the part of Jesus was radically different than what it had been represented to me most of my life. I had always assumed that Jesus was trying to change God's mind about me so that I could go to heaven. But now I am seeing that that kind of thinking is riddled full of all sorts of false assumptions about God, about Jesus and even about myself and my relationship with Him.

As I pointed out last time, since Jesus and the Father are very clearly on the same page in their feelings about me, there is no need for Jesus to try to change anything about God in order to save me. That would be totally superfluous. It is never God's mind that needs changing in any way as I had always thought, it is my mind and heart and opinions about God that need radical updating if I am ever to be reconciled and be able to enjoy His company for eternity. It is the myriads of lies in my own thinking about how God feels towards me that must be exposed as false and let go of if I am ever to be prepared to encounter the immense power and intensity of God's pure, passionate love and to be able to thrive in that fiery presence.

So it becomes crystal clear in this context that any interceding that may be going on between God the Father and us has to be focused entirely on altering our opinions about God, never on changing God's opinions about us in spite of all the religious talk to the contrary. God is not angry at sinners and in need of calming down, sinners are angry and hateful toward God because of their misconceptions about Him that Satan has implanted and reinforces in all the human race. It is us that needs to have our hearts cleansed from the many lies and misconceptions about God before we will be able to receive and embrace His grace and live safely in His presence.

Many parts of this puzzle have been coming together for me for many years now. My new and radically updated understanding of hell and the fire of God was a massive shift for me in freeing me to be able to love God from the heart for the first time in my life. But there are still many more lies about God that keep surfacing all the time and that need exposure and replacement with real truth. My induced fears about the judgment and my confusion about the purpose of Jesus' intercession have also been sources of confusion over the years keeping me from being more fully reconciled with God.

Some of the clearest texts concerning the intercessory role of Jesus are found in Isaiah. This is highly symbolic language and is very easily misunderstood if one does not have a corrected picture of God and His passion. But when it is viewed from a proper perspective it contains very amazing insights about the true role of an intercessor.

Yes, truth is lacking; and he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey. Now the Lord saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no one to intercede; then His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. (Isaiah 59:15-16)

I have trodden the wine press alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their juice spattered on my garments, and stained all my robes. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year for my redeeming work had come. I looked, but there was no helper; I stared, but there was no one to sustain me; so my own arm brought me victory, and my wrath sustained me. (Isaiah 63:3-5 NRSV)

What I see clearly in these verses is that God was appalled that there was no one to be found anywhere that would be able to effectively stand up and defend His reputation. So He sent His son to reveal to the whole universe the real truth about God by living and dying as a human. The whole purpose of Jesus coming to live life as a human and to suffer the wrath of humans and demons alike while they tortured and killed Him and covered him with blood was to expose the real truth about the passion of God's love that we so often mistake for anger. But I have learned that when the Bible refers to the wrath of God it is almost always referring to the concept of passion itself which does not necessarily equate with the kind of wrath or hateful anger that we always suppose it does. It is far too easy to project our perspective of wrath onto God instead of seeking to grasp the real truth about God's passionate love for us.

These verses make it very clear that Jesus came to take things into His own hands as far as changing minds and hearts about the real truth about God. Since no one else could stand up for Him and no one was even willing to stand with Him during this process, He had to do it all alone. This became very evident during the events that transpired during the last hours of His life before He was killed on the cross. Not even His closest disciples took the time or effort to pray alongside Him for even one hour while He was in His greatest distress. He had to take on the job all alone.

But far from coming to suffer the punishments from an angry God up in heaven, Jesus came to reveal the passionate love that fills the heart of our Father in heaven by contrasting it with the effects that sin has wrought in our own psyche. When real love appeared on earth in the form of a man it was immediately met with resistance, fear and animosity on every hand. It finally came to the grand climax of a fatal collision between the lies about God contained in the hearts of all humanity and the truth about God as revealed in the life and willing death of the Son of God. Jesus has always been in the role of seeking to change our minds and hearts and opinions about how God feels towards us and His true character. This is the core of what Jesus continually referred to when He repeatedly asked people to believe all throughout His life on earth.

Over the past month or so I have been privileged to be used by God to “intercede” on His behalf to someone who had all their life been under the delusions of the enemy about Him and has been very openly hostile toward God and anything to do with Him. Because of a great emotional crisis in his life he has decided to take a new look at what might be true about God as I have shared with him what I have been learning about God myself. As I have shared the real truth about God and prayed with this person, I have been thrilled to see him open up and entertain new ideas and feelings toward God that few would have imagined even possible before.

As I have been used by the Spirit to influence this man's opinions about God and have watched God work in his life and heart, I am reminded frequently that it is not my responsibility to fix his problems but is completely God's responsibility. My role is to keep sharing with him the real truth about God in ways that are relevant to his situation and to encourage him to rethink the antagonism that he has held due to his misconceptions about God from his past.

Last night I received a phone call from him relating to me a terribly devastating turn of events in his situation which could potentially threaten to undo all the progress that he has made in his thinking. At least that was the temptation that I was faced with as I heard what was happening. But I was reminded again that this is not my problem and that I have no business taking on his burden for myself or trying to fix his situation with my ideas. I have simply been sharing with him whatever the Spirit has prompted me to do and I can relax and rest in the knowledge that God is still the same and nothing has changed at all in reality. I am learning more about what it really means to be an intercessor for God.

Intercession is for the purpose of reconciliation, whether it is in a marriage, between friends or with God Himself. This is accomplished by seeking to expose the lies and false assumptions about one party held by another and replacing those lies with truth, especially when it comes to God. To do this effectively the interceder must maintain a correct understanding of the character and feelings of the one on who's behalf they are interceding. If they allow themselves to become entangled in the triangle improperly, if they allow their own viewpoints or emotions to distract them from focusing full attention on keeping a proper perspective and communication with the one whom they are representing, their effectiveness can quickly be diminished.

This means that I must have a great deal of trust in the one in who's behalf I am interceding. I have to have total and implicit faith that God is going to be consistently and intensely interested in the reconciliation and that He is always going to prove faithful to being the way that I am representing Him to be to the other person with whom I am interceding. In fact, I myself have to be very in tune with the feelings and desires of the One I am trying to represent so that I become an accurate reflection of His heart to attract others to change their minds about my Friend.

But again, I remind myself that I must let go of all self interest if I am to be a successful intercessor. If there is anything else expected from this process for me besides joy in seeing the other two parties reconciled and united in hearts with each other, then there is a seed of betrayal present that will sooner or later spring up and cause great complications. The heart of the intercessor must be fiercely loyal to the one on who's behalf we are interceding if we are to be a true “friend of the bridegroom”.

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21 NRSV)

Father, I choose to be reconciled to you because of the intercession of Jesus to change my mind and heart about what you are really like. I cannot change my own heart but I trust you to do that within me as the real truth about you soaks in deeper and deeper. I also praise you and thank you for using me to be a co-intercessor with Jesus in seeking to change other people's false opinions and feelings about you. I ask that you fill me with your Spirit so that I can experience the joy of watching others be reconciled with you and with each other. This is the joy that John the Baptist shared as he watched others become more attracted to Jesus than to himself. Fill me with the spirit of a true and loyal friend of the Bridegroom like John was. Teach me and mentor me in this ministry of reconciliation for your name's sake.